The Story of Us

The Hobo Journal started many years ago when I got the notion of sharing an edited version of my spiritual diary with friends. I don't know what first gave me the audacity or inclination to do so. I prayed it was divine inspiration, not ego. There certainly seemed to be nothing particularly amazing about what I had written, at least to me. But something about the writer's compulsion to share your insides with the world seemed to motivate me. I e-mailed the journal back in those days, and I got back a few thoughtful responses, which encouraged the compulsion further, but it never was intentionally about how other people would respond to it. This is a mystery I can't explain. I don't write for others, and yet the sharing is somehow essential to the process. When I stopped journaling a couple of years ago to focus almost exclusively on my doctoral dissertation, I missed it, both the personal writing and the sharing.

One dynamic I've always noticed. If I sit down to intentionally write something wise or profound, as I am occasionally tempted to do, it backfires every time. That's when the ego is creeping in, and the Spirit calls me out on it every time. The entry winds up sounding forced, dull, thoroughly uninspired. Conversely, any time I have ever written anything that had the ring of truth to it, I am convinced it did not come from me. I had no idea what idea was going to emerge when I sat down to write it, and when I re-read it, it sounds like it came from someone else's mind.

So I can't explain why I write. It seems to have its own purpose which defies explanation. Clearly, it is a history of my love affair with God (or, perhaps more accurately, the story of God's relentless, passionate pursuit of me).

Gethsemani's Abbot Elias, in his chapter talk this week, spoke similarly of the monk's vocation, which likewise has no readily-identified purpose. It is a life that exists for its own sake:

I sometimes think the idea of going to a monastery to interview monks is about as intelligent as going to a resort to interview people on their honeymoon and ask them why they are there. The comparison is not as silly as it sounds. The heart of Cistercian spirituality has always been the prospect of spousal union between God and the soul. Such union--or even its pursuit--transcends rational explanation.

I cannot explain why God pursues me, or why I need to write about it, but I am grateful nevertheless.